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Barry Walsh

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“I think that we should be grateful that we have come away from all our adventures unharmed-from the real ones as well as from the dreams."
"Are you sure we have?" he asked.
"Just as sure as I suspect that the reality of one night, even the reality of a whole lifetime, isn't the whole truth."
"And no dream," he said with a soft sigh, "is entirely a dream."
She took his head with both her hands and pressed it warmly to her breast. "But now I suppose we are both awake," she said, "for a long time to come.”
― Arthur Schnitzler, Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas

1 likes

“In this sense, yes, we are moral; we have, at least, the technical capacity for leading a truly examined life; we have self-awareness, memory, foresight, and judgment. But the last several decades of evolutionary thought lead one to emphasize the word technical. Chronically subjecting ourselves to a true and bracing moral scrutiny, and adjusting our behavior accordingly, is not something we are designed for. We are potentially moral animals—which is more than any other animal can say—but we aren’t naturally moral animals. To be moral animals, we must realize how thoroughly we aren’t.”
― Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

2 likes

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

tags: change, survival

1173 likes

“if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

tags: alone, honesty, yates

700 likes

“If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451